[Note: This is the first of an occasional blog series]

How is the RAKScraps newsletter put together? Do “magical elves make it so”? Does it require late nights, sweat, tears, and tight deadlines? Is it written months in advance?

Well, alas, the “magical elves” are real people. It may require a late night, but usually it’s a busy few days right before publication. It’s not written months in advance.

Here’s a summary from the Editor, Barbara, of what she does each month to make the RAKScraps Newsletter available to you:

• Each newsletter has an “in the news” section, which mentions upcoming events, reminders, notices, or comments to the readers.
• The Quick Pages preview is created and loaded up.
• The Challenge information mostly stays the same, but I change the dates and, if necessary, the descriptions. I also add new challenges and remove ones we’re not doing any more.
• The Sponsors put their kits on the server. Individual Forums and Galleries are created for them.  These are then linked into the newsletter. Sponsor reviews are taken from the Forum [the team has access to this forum early] and reprinted in the newsletter.
• The Tutorial, received by a certain date, is added to the newsletter.
• The Member and Staff interviews are added to the newsletter. The layouts are also added to the newsletter.
• The Featured Challenge and the RAKFile are chosen and written about.
• The newsletter is reviewed for anything that looks amiss [spelling errors, spacing issues, changed fonts].
• The home page is changed to include the new Sponsor ads and the month’s Quick Pages.
• I make the newsletter “live” after ensuring that both the online and PDF versions work correctly.
• I email about 36,000 people and post to the Yahoo Group that the newsletter is ready!

The most important thing I check and double-check are the links. It is very important that the links be correct - imagine if someone was looking for the current sponsor and the link took them to a broken link or last month’s sponsor!

Sponsors